Businessweek Archives

Four Unfortunate Facts about the Job Market

After this morning’s report, here are four unfortunate facts about the job market.

1) Manufacturing jobs are falling at their fastest rate since 1946, down -12.2% over the past year.

2) Private sector jobs outside of manufacturing are also falling at their fastest rate since 1946, down -4.0% over the past year.

3) Manufacturing jobs are falling much faster than the rest of the private sector. In fact, the ‘excess’ job decline in manufacturing (the difference between -12.2% and -4.0%) is the largest since 1975.

4) The ten-year job growth in the private sector is down to only 559K jobs. At this rate, we will hit zero ten-year private job growth next month or the month after.

One important question is whether there is a ‘floor’ for manufacturing jobs. So far, we haven’t seen one. Over the past three months, manufacturing jobs have been falling at a -13.6% annual rate.

I would say that the evisceration of U.S. manufacturing may be our single biggest nonfinancial problem right now. I’m currently examining the extent to which this can be tied to trade.